Last Wednesday, the archivist for Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, Eileen Keating, spoke with us students about the history of the College of Human Ecology and its connection with our house’s namesake, Flora Rose. The College of Human Ecology began in 1907 as the Department of Home Economics within CALS. It was an important educational pathway for farmer’s wives in the rural areas of central NY.

Hearing that there was a whole department devoted to Home Economics made me think back to middle school, during which I took one required Home Economics class. In the course, we baked chocolate oat cookies, made pizza, and learned to do the laundry and use a sewing machine. I wish that this class would have been made mandatory in late high school or early college, when we would be closer to independence, adulthood, and self-reliance, rather than in middle school. As college students, we need to know how to do laundry, cook our own meals, organize, and balance our budgets. In middle school, we are so reliant on our parents that I don’t think that we retain many lessons about how to live and thrive on our own, because these skills seem irrelevant and unnecessary to our dependent younger selves.

Therefore, I am inspired by Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose, who established the School of Home Economics. I think that we should be required to take at least one Home Economics class in high school or college, when the skills and lessons taught would be more relevant to us.